Chapter 612: Battle Without Honor

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

In the wasteland of a battlefield, even though both sides tacitly avoided the only group of buildings nearby, the land here was still filled with countless craters as every inch of land was washed over countless times with magic.

Black undead crawled out from the black earth, answering their master’s summons to join the battlefield. However, this was “clean earth” that didn’t have a single skeleton within it. These seemingly ordinary skeleton soldiers were nothing more than puppets created from the aura of death.

These false undead that had no souls would use twice the usual mana to summon. However, their effectiveness for undead magic would be even lower than even the weakest goblin corpses.

“Dawn, cleanse them all.”

I only needed to lift up my holy sword, and my light of cleansing would instantly cause these artificial skeletons to scatter. The faintly shining Tower of Holy Light off in the distance could even give me additional strength.

“I hope that Estrada has poor eyesight, and that he won’t notice that I modified his hammer into a sword…”

At this point in the fight, I had imperceptibly become a full-time support role. With Elisa and Little Red’s attack power, and Margaret’s incredibly varied support magic spells, I would be far more effective by concentrating on healing and support rather than attacking when I was only at Myth rank.

“Dust to dust, earth to earth.”

Under my summoned Holy Light, large amounts of artificial undead were instantly eradicated the moment that they awoke.

If the Holy Church explained this phenomenon, perhaps it would be called a high-level Divine Art, but to me, this wasn’t anything close to a Divine Art. All I had to do was let Holy Light radiate its natural properties, and these undead would naturally be dispelled and return to death again.

There was too much of a power level difference between me and Conservation. Although my Holy Light had an advantage at first, its effective radius ended up being suppressed, and some artificial undead managed to survive.

However, I didn’t really mind this too much. Would these low-level undead really be able to threaten my powerful allies who were all SemiGod at the minimum?

I really wanted to see this. Conservation was no idiot or novice. It was only natural that she wouldn’t summon these skeletons just for the heck of it while fighting against my cleansing Holy Light.

As expected, the black skeletons suddenly changed in the very next instant.

Many low-level skeletons combined with each other, and their bones scattered and rearranged themselves within the amalgamation. The new mass speedily gathered together, seeming like a teeming horde of ants that were all on top of each other.

Soon, many gigantic bone giants crawled up from these masses. Each one of them was the combination of countless low-level skeletons.

This seemed like an ordinary undead mage’s technique, but it was actually foundationally different. Undead mages’ corpse combining and sewing monsters together would only be the combination of organs and physical body parts.

Since each different organ would have a completely different soul shard as the source, it would be impossible to combine body parts from different sources together with excellent results. In undead combining, 1+1 < 2, 100+100 < 150, and it would be considered quite good if 1000+1000 still equaled 1000. Otherwise, any undead mage would only need the simplest accumulation of body parts to create a super monster more powerful than anything.

Super top-level undead creatures would require top-level resources. As for low-level undead creatures, even if you increased their energy level, the base resources would be unable to handle the energy, and directly collapse.

However, the bone giants that Conservation crafted all had pure, complete skeletons—every single one of them. There appeared to be no problems whatsoever that all other large undead constructions would have with low-quality resources or incompatible parts. It was as if each bone giant was made from an exquisitely packaged set of building blocks, and that some simple combining was all that was needed to perfectly create the bone giant from the said building blocks.

Each bone giant had been born from nothing. Their energy levels varied in strength from Gold all the way to Myth rank, but we all sensed that each bone giant was a complete individual.

“Conservation is truly incredible to have such a technique.”

Not only were Harloys’ eyes shining with desire, even I wanted to master this technique.

I had previously thought that we had forced her to the point of having no ability to summon any additional creatures here, yet she was still capable of constructing artificial skeletons and then using those as the foundation to construct high-level undead.

Some bone giants were down on all fours and roaring like beasts. Some flew up into the sky, transforming into bee swarms or bone giants. Some charged around everywhere on the battlefield like tanks.

I was now certain that if it weren’t for the fact that I had dispelled most of the undead, Conservation would have been capable of summoning enough building blocks to even create a SemiGod level undead creature.

It was likely that only Conservation could use such a technique effectively as she had a ridiculous unending reserve of mana.

“If only I had such a technique, I wouldn’t need to construct completely artificial undead. I’d only need to give undead better artificial body parts that don’t clash with them, which would greatly reduce incompatibility issues. No, that would seem like such a waste. I could use artificial body parts to act as the core skeleton and nervous system, and then pick out appropriate organs to strengthen…”

For a pure warrior, it was likely that they would only be able to tell the usefulness of such a technique on the battlefield. However, I could tell that this would be a revolutionary step forward in undead magic. This would absolutely be a groundbreaking innovation. Without even mentioning the effects on undead magic progress, just the fact that corpses were no longer required as resources would be more than enough to change the entire undead mage society.

“I absolutely must obtain this technique.”

Just as I was burning up in passion, Margaret suddenly flashed to my side, and said, “It’s about time, isn’t it?”

I calculated the time. It was indeed about time, so I nodded. The next instant, Adam flew back to me together with Little Red, and Elisa appeared behind my back.

*Snap!*

With a single snap of my fingers, all of us returned to that rundown hotel in the 137th level of the Chaos Abyss as if the cruel battle from earlier was nothing more than an illusion.

What would be the most difficult for a boss to handle when that boss was trapped within the dungeon?

Enemies with excellent cooperation and disgusting healing that fought a battle of attrition?

Enemies that clearly had the strength for a direct fight yet still chose a battle of attrition?

Being forced to sit on your throne, watching the enemy kill all your subordinates and then discuss how to defeat you right in front of you?

I felt that the most disgusting part was that no matter how great of an advantage you obtained as the boss, your enemies could instantly leave any time that they wanted (including if they died, for they would still come back), and then the enemy team would come back after being fully healed for a second, third, fourth… or even twenty-seventh battle.

Correct, this was now the twenty-seventh time that we were fighting against Conservation.

I didn’t have a great deal of power over my personal bug-like world of Hell. However, just the fact that I could enter and leave as I pleased, together with any of my allies, would be one of the greatest powers and advantages if I used it properly.

Conservation had managed to achieve Main God power level despite having an incomplete undead physical body. This was unimaginably difficult. I was impressed with her astonishing talent and hard work. However, I had no intentions of causing any losses to my side for the sake of someone who was already trapped in my world. That was why I brought out the most shameless strategy possible—we would use a slow battle of attrition at the lowest cost possible to us to defeat her in the end.

When we returned, Adam collapsed on the carpet without caring about his image while panting loudly. Little Red grabbed a large pitcher and demanded water. It seemed that she had spat fire to the point where her throat was smoking… No, wait, this was the scent of alcohol, not water. Where did she scam someone for some good alcohol again?

Margaret was probably the only normal one and a person that I didn’t need to worry about here. She was sitting while glancing over her notes on our fights, calculating Conservation’s true power and aces left, as well as calculating the weaknesses that we exposed in our battles.

“Honestly, having a Main God power level Undead Emperor be our training partner? Truly so extravagant.”

Yes, that was right. Since my full party was here, of course we needed to train. It was indeed one of my goals to improve our tacit cooperation through actual combat. We needed actual combat to better understand each other’s current abilities and combat styles.

Our party hadn’t fought together for so long now… Or, it should be said that there had been no enemy that required our cooperation. Now that we had such an excellent training partner, of course I would want to use her for as long as I could.

I felt that Conservation was probably in a terrible mood. What we thought was quite obvious. In the constant battles, not only were all her trump cards discovered, her abilities were no longer secret, and defeat—in fact, a humiliating defeat—to a group of individuals all far weaker than her would only be a matter of time.

Whenever we finished a battle, we could simply go back to the hotel to eat, sleep, and recover. However, she would need to reorganize and prepare for the next battle. No matter if we were at disadvantage or advantage, we could retreat at any time we wanted. However, she had to persist no matter the situation. If it weren’t for the fact that her mana seemed to be limitless, she would have lost long ago, and after so many battles, I felt like I had reached the truth at why her mana seemed to be limitless.

“So, you really intend to win against a Main God in a battle of attrition like this?”

“Of course. Even if she still has mana, her energy and concentration will have limits. Our tension and her tension are on completely different levels. As she has no allies, she’ll have to constantly focus all the time, and as her concentration lapses, it’s only a matter of time before she reveals a critical weakness.”

I left other things unsaid. Slowly forcing Conservation to the brink would be the only way to expose even more of her trump cards. As she was a powerful individual who was famous long before human society started ruling the mortal plane, she had truly accumulated many things. Just those artificial skeletons of hers were enough for me to research for several decades.

For any mage, a critical research result would be far more enticing than any treasure. Every trump card that Conservation exposed truly helped myself and Harloys to learn so much.

Although we still didn’t know how she accomplished what she did, with the samples that we obtained plus our theories, along with Aso’s knowledge of the Tark Republic’s undead magic that he’d left to me, we could have a rather basic attempt at reverse engineering. As long as we truly defeated Conservation, none of her secrets would remain secrets any longer.

Another benefit of these fights was for the Dawn holy sword at my waist. As it constantly dispelled undead, not only did my holy sword seem undamaged, it even seemed like it was strengthening itself more and more.

I drank some water and wiped my mouth. Rest time was about to be over.

“Everyone’s rested enough, right? Let’s continue with the twenty-eighth battle. This time, Adam and I will both act as the vanguard and pressure her some more. If she focuses her attacks on me, I will teleport out and back in again. Don’t mind me too much. Margaret, create some extra cannon fodder to deal with her summoned creatures. Little Red, Elisa, are you still able to use the combination magic attack from earlier…?”

I felt that the only thing more disgusting than an unkillable tank was an unkillable tank that could suddenly vanish if you focused your fire on him too much…

We kept trying various different strategies against Conservation. Any weaknesses that we exposed would then be fixed. Our combat strength was solidly improving. Without my realizing it, it seemed like I had become our party’s leader yet again.

“Let’s slow down and not force her too much. It’s so rare to have such an excellent training partner. We’ll try to have one hundred battles against her!”

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